The Partisans in the Closet

According to the latest Gallup Poll, last year a record 42 percent of Americans considered themselves political independents. That’s the largest percentage of independents Gallup has recorded since the polling firm began doing interviews by telephone 25 years ago. Moreover, the percentage of independents rose to 46 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Based on these results, Gallup’s managing editor, Jeffrey Jones, concludes that the increase in independent identification “adds a greater level of unpredictability to this year’s congressional midterm elections.” Jones goes on to argue that, “with Americans increasingly eschewing party labels for themselves, candidates who are less closely aligned to their party or its prevailing doctrine may benefit.”

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Don’t count on it. Despite Gallup’s findings, you won’t see a large number of successful independent candidates next November, nor will many Democratic or Republican candidates distance themselves from their own party on major issues. That’s because, despite the apparent rise in independent identification, Americans are actually becoming more rather than less partisan in their behavior. Yes, even “independents.”

There are good reasons to be skeptical about Gallup’s claims of declining partisanship in the American electorate. For one thing, other national polls have not found an exceptionally high percentage of independent identifiers in recent months. In fact, according to the Huffington Post Pollster website, the average percentage of independent identifiers was substantially higher in late 2011 and early 2012 than it is today. And we know what happened in November of 2012—the most partisan election in modern times, with record levels of party loyalty and straight-ticket voting (for reams of evidence, see The Gamble, the excellent new book on the 2012 election by political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck).

Another major problem with Jones’s claims is the well-known fact that, when pressed, the vast majority of Americans who initially identify themselves as political independents acknowledge that they lean toward one party or the other. Almost three-fourths of independents surveyed by Gallup during 2013 indicated that they leaned toward one of the two major parties.

Why so many independents, then? Millions of Americans today are attracted to the independent label. Parties have a bad reputation—both major parties are viewed unfavorably by a majority of Americans—and there’s something appealing about the idea of thinking independently rather than blindly supporting a party. But in fact, the large majority of independents are “closet partisans” who consistently support only one party’s candidates. They call themselves independents and many of them register as independents when given an opportunity, but they vote like partisans. That was certainly true in the last election cycle.